Hardwired

 “I will finish it by saying that you should resist letting self-analysis become self-abuse.” John Steinbeck

That’s good advice from John Steinbeck, a writer who had a deep understanding of human psychology, and something I frequently violate to my detriment. I am my harshest and most consistent critic. I need a certain amount of order and predictability to feel balanced, a trait I’m not proud of because it can easily lead to falling into a rut and a lack of spontaneity, which makes one dull and rigid. Sometimes the set of my ways, my habits of mind, make me feel closed off, isolated inside my head. Staying in the moment is as challenging as ever. 

Full, leisurely retirement here in our delightfully comfortable bungalow on Milpas Street has been wonderful but I know for the health of our bank account that I have to transition to semi-retirement before long. Today my wife looked at me and said, “I’m a little worried about money.” So, this pleasant run we’ve been on will soon come to an end. I expected this, and planned all along to find part-time work within a few months of bidding the school district goodbye. This will hopefully mean a reasonably tolerable part-time gig of thirty hours a week. I don’t want to do much thinking, I just want something I can do primarily on my feet, even if it’s repetitive, in exchange for time to write, think, and breathe. Thus far, Trader Joe’s has rejected me twice, not even an interview to look me over, see that I’m ambulatory, pleasant, and capable of doing the job. If I’m honest with myself, and I usually am, I admit that my job hunting efforts to date have been scattershot, not even classifiable as half-hearted. I don’t want to surrender the slow-paced, completely free hours spent writing, reading under the market umbrella on the patio, afternoon naps, training sessions, drinking wine and sleeping past six a.m. Not yet. Part of me wants to hold on to this luxury as long as possible. 

Dissipation and dissolution are for the wealthy. I’m just a working-class guy. 

My daughter started her first post-City College job today, at a local sandwich shop. It’s an entry-level gig, part-time. She was nearly a half hour late because she mixed up the start time, but she made it and put a full day in, and came home smelling of salad oil and bemoaning the math involved in making change. She’s had this awful phobia about numbers for years, it’s her academic Achilles Heel. She may return to school in the Fall, but she doesn’t yet have an idea where. On the other hand, she’s not yet twenty so I refuse to push her faster than she can go, not as long as we can afford it. No rent, no chores to speak of, a car to get around. My daughter’s best girlfriends, her posse, have returned to their colleges and universities, one at Cal Poly in San Luis, and two at UC Berkeley. Smart girls, but goofy as hell. They start laughing for no reason. Why does Ally titter when I ask if she wants a glass of water?

My wife and daughter rarely read this blog, but somehow always react if I mention them in a piece. I’m making an effort to bring the lens closer to who I am, although any regular readers of this thing I created in 2004 and have obsessively kept going since should have an idea. My politics lean left and have since I had a brief fling with the GOP in the mid-80’s. My preoccupation is with the balance of power between citizens and their government, between the wealthy and the many, between corporations and consumers, and between humans and the planet. Our economic system works too well for the few and is too hard on the many, and is making the planet sick, and in some places unlivable. The resources America hands to the military-industrial-security-intelligence complex at the expense of the welfare of the nation’s citizens is obscene. The War on Terror was a misguided delusion that I opposed from the outset. Ditto the Patriot Act. Serious shit is happening on every front, but if it’s not unfolding before our eyes every day we lose interest, until the next flood, fire, mudslide or hurricane. Human nature, hard-wired. It’s like Robbie Robertson sings, “Hardwired for war, hardwired for sex.” 

The only book I’m reading now is The Road Home by Jim Harrison. Nearly done with it. Harrison’s writing gobsmacks me. I love this tale about the Northridge clan on the American Plains. It’s a story of land and cattle and rivers, of lost brothers and a long absent son, and his mother, Dalva. Harrison gets the tone right, and the reader always knows the season, the temperature, and what flowers are in bloom or lying dormant. But Harrison also gets his characters right, builds them with insight and detail and humor. Like some people are taken with certain painters, I’m taken with Jim Harrison, though I feel like I’m late to the party, having intentionally immersed myself in his writing only in the last two years. 

We’re taking a road trip to San Francisco in a few weeks for our kids’ birthdays. Our son Gabriel lives in the city again, so we’ll see his neighborhood and do some wandering. No idea what the Covid situation is up north at the moment. In the third week of September I will travel to Oregon to visit my brother in Tillamook, our annual get together. Whenever we spend time together I realize how similar in temperament we are. We’re both obsessive, neat, and practical, and born fretters over the mundane details of adult life. I was mulling over a road trip, sort of a repeat of what I did last September, hopefully minus the wildfires and closed freeways and smoky air, but have decided not to risk getting stuck somewhere and will fly to Portland and rent a car that will sit in my brother’s driveway while we head off in his Jeep Cherokee with bikes on the rack and a cooler full of snacks in plastic bags with twist ties. Granola bars, crackers, cheese, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Green pastures, dairy cows, rivers, trees. I hope to once again look upon the mighty Columbia. 

The Death of Shame

 Shame: n. The feeling of humiliation or distress arising from the consciousness of something dishonourable or ridiculous in one’s own or another’s behavior or circumstances, or from a situation offensive to one’s own or another’s sense of propriety or decency. Oxford English Dictionary

You might think a man with three daughters would be hyper-sensitive to issues facing women in the workplace, including unequal pay and sexual harassment, but in the case of Andrew Cuomo, the embattled Governor of New York, you would be wrong. Having three daughters hasn’t curbed Cuomo’s penchant for hitting on women, groping them, kissing them, and other lecherous behavior. Despite compelling and voluminous evidence that he harassed numerous women, Cuomo defiantly asserts his innocence. His Italian heritage is what accounts for his excessive displays of physical affection, he says. All the women who came forward to accuse him are mistaken or exaggerating. He’s a good guy, just misunderstood. 

I wonder what Big Daddy Mario thinks of all this? Does he wonder where his boy went wrong? 

Suppose one of Cuomo’s daughters came home and told him that her male boss, an older white man in a position of authority, touched her breast or rubbed her backside or kept pestering her to have a date. Would Cuomo be fine with that? Would he write it off as harmless? Would he tell his daughter that she must be misinterpreting her boss’ actions? By all the accounts I’ve read, Andrew Cuomo has always been a bit of a bully and a thug. During the early days of the pandemic, when New York was hit hard and suffering, Cuomo’s stock rose on the strength of the striking contrast between his daily briefings and Trump’s fact-free, rambling, misleading and self-congratulatory monologues. New York, and the nation, looked to some political figure for serious leadership, and there was Cuomo, who in comparison to the petty and whiny President of the United States seemed like a tower of strength and competence. In reality, Cuomo’s leadership on Covid was shockingly poor, as described in a new book by Ross Barken titled The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York. Barkan argues that the actions Cuomo took -- and failed to take -- resulted in thousands of preventable deaths. So much for competence. 

Has the concept of honor lost all meaning in modern America? The smashing of norms was perfected by Donald Trump, but it didn’t start with the King of Mar-A-Lago. Shame no longer has the power to temper boorish or criminal behavior. Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Ron Desantis, Andrew Cuomo  -- no shame, no contrition, no remorse. I wrote a satirical bit on this blog a few years ago (I’ll link it here https://ozongsbalcony.blogspot.com/2019/07/blue-ribbon-president.html) in which Trump had sex with a sheep in the Oval Office and lost not a single acolyte or fan. Even brazen cruelty to animals couldn’t turn the MAGA crowd against Trump. Every one of Trump’s malignant acts, idiotic statements, and cruel policies can be explained away, deflected, or flipped on its head and weaponized in the alternate reality of MAGA world. 

I came across this quote while reading The Road Home by Jim Harrison, an American writer who is very underrated in my estimation: “The rich and the upper middle class were now seething with resentment over protecting their position and were demanding an enforceable mono-ethic which was gradually turning the country into a fascist Disneyland.” The Road Home was published in 1998. I’d say the transformation is complete. The mono-ethic is market capitalism. 

I received my sample ballot for the recall election of Gavin Newsom. There are 46 would-be governors waiting to take Newsom’s place if the voters of California are lame enough to remove him, including Caitlyn Jenner and Larry Elder. My favorite candidate is a Republican named Denver Stoner. I have no idea who Stoner is or what he stands for, I just love the name, Denver Stoner. There’s the obvious association with cannabis aficionados, but also a strength: Mike Hammer. Jason Bourne. Denver Stoner. I imagine some CIA Director in the middle of a crisis turning to his team and barking, “Get me Denver Stoner.”

The sun beats down. In other parts of California fires rage on. The pandemic has returned on the wings of the Delta variant, and we’re back to taking a mask everywhere. This resurgence belongs to the unvaccinated who refuse for misguided political reasons. 

2 + 2 = 5

 “I have come very late to the pleasure of sitting still with little or nothing on my mind.” Jim Harrison, The Road Home

Coming to the end of my first month of retirement. My Freedom Summer, the first time in twenty-two years that I haven’t been yoked to someone else’s schedule. It has been brilliant. A run of days of cool mornings and lovely sunny afternoons. I’ve been writing, reading, walking or riding my bike up Garcia Road, doing my training sessions, drinking wine, and watching TV in the evening with my wife. We’re into Dr. Death and The White Lotus at the moment. We enjoyed the Kominsky Method. The money is holding. Everybody’s healthy and we don’t suffer at all; life is crazy good right now. 

But back east in the nation’s capitol, the seat of our government and home of our limited, tenuous democracy, and many of our most cherished national myths, the war between Fact and Fantasy rages on. Trump fans the flame, Fox News amplifies it, and GOP nitwits like Kevin McCarthy and Ted Cruz repeat the talking points. Whatever the issue, employ the same tactic: work a bit of verbal jujitsu and flip it. Thus can Elise Stefanik, the third ranking member in the House GOP hierarchy, blame the breach of the capitol on Nancy Pelosi. Stefanik is banking on the American people being too ignorant to know what Stefanik clearly knows, namely, that the Speaker of the House isn’t responsible for security at the capitol. Not that facts matter. Slinging mud is what matters to the GOP. Anything and everything can be blamed on Pelosi. 

The modern GOP is like the Communist Party in the old Soviet Union, decrepit and morally debased, interested only in clinging to power; it’s a party based on denial -- of everything from climate change to who was responsible for the insurrection on January 6. We learned this week that neither Kevin McCarthy or Mitch McConnell watched the first hearing of the House subcommittee investigating the Trump-inspired insurrection. Couldn’t be bothered, nothing to learn from four officers who battled rioters on that mournful day. Over on the Fox propaganda network, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson accused the officers of “theatrics.” So much for backing the men and women of Law Enforcement. 

Keeping an eye on politics tests one’s faith in human nature. Where else in this country do people so regularly sell out as in the halls of Congress? I’m not talking about the compromises politicians must make in order to craft legislation -- horse trading and compromise is how the sausage gets made. It’s messy and few are happy at the end. It’s the art of the possible and all that. I’m talking about selling out one’s principles. Condemning Donald Trump for inciting a mob one minute, then skipping down to Mar-A-Lago to lick his balls the next, as Kevin McCarthy did earlier this year, is what I’m talking about. Shamelessly describing the mob as a bunch of peaceful tourists, trying to turn rioters into patriots and martyrs, gaslighting people every day into doubting what they saw with their own eyes is my point. 

Insisting that 2 + 2 = 5. 

The last thing the GOP wants is for the full scope of what went down on January 6 to come out. They know where the trail of evidence will lead. They must know which members will be implicated. That’s why McConnell nixed a non-partisan independent investigation and McCarthy did his best to ratfuck the House subcommittee by clogging it with wingnuts and bomb-throwers like Jim Jordan. McCarthy wanted to turn the hearings into a circus, but since being outmaneuvered by Nancy Pelosi, all he can do is carp from the sidelines. Kevin’s not the brightest bulb, but he is scared of Jim Jordan and his ilk, and doesn’t want what happened to John Boehner to happen to him. McCarthy plays all the angles.

I don’t know how these folks sleep at night after spending an entire day pissing on the oath they swore. Corruption is corrosive and power corrupts and absolute power (which is what Trump wants. He wants to be Vladimir Putin) corrupts absolutely. If I were Steve Scalisi, I’d be watching over my shoulder for Elise Stefanik. She likes power, she’s hungry for it. She’s had a taste of it and wants more. 

You can’t swim in a cesspool and come out smelling of lilac.